Software Raid Configuration; Creating The Raid Partitions - Red Hat ENTERPRISE LINUX 4 System Administration Manual

Chapter 10.

Software RAID Configuration

Software RAID can be configured during the graphical installation process, the text-based installation
process, or during a kickstart installation. This chapter discusses how to configure software RAID
during installation, using the Disk Druid interface.
Chapter 9, Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID)
Read
differences between hardware and software RAID, and the differences between RAID 0, 1, and 5. An
overview of the steps required to configure RAID include:
• Applying software RAID partitions to the physical hard drives.
If you wish to have the boot partition (/boot/) reside on a RAID parition, it must be on a RAID 1
partition.
• Creating RAID devices from the software RAID partitions.
• Optional: Configuring LVM from the RAID devices. Refer to
information on configuring LVM after first configuring RAID.
• Creating file systems from the RAID devices.
Note
Although the following steps are illustrated during a GUI installation, the same can be
done during a text-based installation.
Configuration of software RAID must be done manually in Disk Druid during the
installation process.
Two 9.1 GB SCSI drives (/dev/sda and /dev/sdb) are used in the following examples. They detail
how to create a simple RAID 1 configuration by implementing multiple RAID devices.
On the Disk Partitioning Setup screen, select Manually partition with Disk Druid.

10.1. Creating the RAID Partitions

In a typical situation, the disk drives are new or are formatted. Both drives are shown as raw devices
with no partition configuration in
Figure 10.1, "Two Blank Drives, Ready For
first to learn about RAID, the
Chapter 8, LVM Configuration
Configuration".
for more
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